A Hard Stop is the police procedure for stopping and apprehending someone they suspect to be armed. It was the procedure they followed when they stopped Mark Duggan in a minicab in Tottenham in August 2011. Duggan was shot dead, provoking a week of rioting across the country in 2011. Despite the title the film isn't really about the hardness of the Stop, it's the about the hardness of the Going On and being Left Behind. The incident itself isn't explored, possibly because the film makers assume the issue has already been covered sufficiently. (It does though have a quite detailed explanation of the other riot at the Broadwater Estate in 1985, when PC Keith Blakelock was killed, and how that event has shaped police/ community relationships ever since.) Instead we follow the lives of two of Duggan's friends in the three years after the shooting.

Kurtis Henville and Marcus Knox Hooke are first introduced to us driving around the streets of Tottenham late night, looking menacing and talking about how much they hate the police and how they refuse to be intimidated by them. It's exactly the kind of entrenched bad boy posturing that leads a lot of people to look the other way when armed police overstep the mark. After that though the film is about two men trying to step back from the posture, make a real life for themselves, even though they are both still choked up with anger.

Marcus unintentionally started the riots by smashing up a police car the night after. After some time in prison he has embraced Islam and works with disadvantaged children. Kurtis, who used to earn a packet dealing on the streets, is trying to support his family by going straight and doing a legitimate job. He gets all excited about a job interview at Tesco, but ends up having to take a telesales job in East Anglia, the commute for which puts a real strain on his family life. While Marcus has clearly found ways to channel his anger, Kurtis is apt to blow his lid and always seem a little embarrassed when it happens. The relationship between the two is illustrated in a scene where Marcus is showing him around his mosque. Kurtis shows polite interest but is clearly put off by all the rules to be followed; he still wants to have a drink. I have to say I really warmed to old Kurtis at the moment, his determintaion to stick it out and try work things out for himself. But, the rest of the film is his gradual realisation that doing the right thing is going to be a relentlessly demeaning and soul destroying process. You really feel for him, and by the end you are wondering if he might be better off sticking with the gangsta posturing.